News & Events

Started in 2012, the ICARUS research project aims to develop robotic tools which can assist "human" operator during Search and Rescue (SAR) operations. This 26-min video provides an overview of several ICARUS tools developed during the project.

Released in 2017 by the ICARUS consortium, the book describes in detail the methodology applied to develop new SAR tools as well as their corresponding commercial applications. The book also provides an excellent summary of the results of the project in 266 pages divided into 10 chapters.

The European Robotics League announces place and dates for new Emergency Robots competition: Piombino (Italy), 15-23 September, 2017.
THE CALL FOR PARTICIPANTS IS OPEN!
The deadline for the first phase of the application is 3rd April 2017 See details HERE and the invitation below
"Dear friends and colleagues,

One year after having demonstrated the 81-hours continuous solar-powered flight that is still the current world record in flight endurance for all aicrafts, the AtlantikSolar UAV has complteted its next milestone by demonstrating the first-ever fully-autonomous solar-powered perpetual flight in a 26-hours Search-and-Rescue mission.

The Multi-Domain Robot Command and Control Station (MDRC2) is a single platform allowing operators to communicate with multiple unmanned systems in the context of Search and Rescue (SAR) operations. Doing so requires the MDRC2 to integrate several hardware systems and to establish a connection to an Exoskeleton for intuitive control of a slave robot arm. The video below provides for a detailed description of the system and its main functionalities.

On the 9th and 10th of July 2015, ICARUS project partners simulated a maritime crisis management scenario at the Navy Base of Alfeite (Almada) in Portugal. Watch the new video of the event prepared by our partner INESC (Institute for Systems and Computer Engineering of Porto):

On the 4th of September 2015, the final field trials of the robotic tools developed within the FP7 ICARUS project took place on the training grounds of the Belgian First Aid and Support Team (ICARUS member B-FAST) in Marche-en-Famenne, Belgium.

Daniela Doroftei - Member of the ICARUS Coordination Team in Abu Dhabi (Credits RMA)
The ICARUS team successfully participated in the UN-INSARAG Global Meeting which took place on October 18-19 in Abu Dhabi alongside with key players from the international search and rescue (SAR) community.

Several ICARUS consortium partners successfully participated in the euRathlon 2015 Challenge which took place in Piombino (Italy) from 17 to 25 September 2015. This year, the ICARUS team which ranked second of the overall competition was composed of Eurecat (Spain), IMM (Poland), INESC (Portugal), Integrasys (Spain), RMA (Belgium), SPACE Apps (Belgium) and UKL (Germany). Additional ICARUS partners were also present in Italy to support and help the team, including CINAV (Portugal), CMRE (Italy) and SpaceTec Partners (Belgium).

On the 4th of September 2015, the final field trials of the robotic tools developed within the FP7 ICARUS project took place on the training grounds of the Belgian First Aid and Support Team (ICARUS member B-FAST) in Marche-en-Famenne, Belgium. The purpose of the demonstration was to validate the different tools developed by the project partners in a real-life use case scenario.

On 7 May 2015, a rotorcraft developed within the ICARUS FP7 research project performed the first-ever legally approved Remotely Piloted Aircraft (RPAS) flight in Brussels, less than one kilometre away from the Berlaymont building, the iconic headquarters of the European Commission, as confirmed by the Belgian Civil Aviation Authorities (CAA).

The ICARUS project has been invited to participate to INSARAG's forthcoming Global Meeting alongside key players from the UN Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (ISDR), the International Federation of the Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) and the World Humanitarian Summit (WHS) Secretariat.
This global Meeting is set to prepare a contribution to the World Humanitarian Summit in 2016 with the INSARAG Abu Dhabi Declaration, embracing themes for a new agenda towards prioritising effectiveness, management of risk and transformation of innovation.

Fourth of September 2015 will see the final field trials of the robotic tools of the FP7 ICARUS Project, at Marche-en-Famenne, Belgium.
The field trials will showcase the ICARUS robotic tools, which have been developed for the Urban Search and Rescue scenario, demonstrating their capabilities to assist “human” SAR teams in the aftermath of a major disaster such as an earthquake.
Marche-en-Famenne is the training ground of the heavy SAR team of B-FAST, a member of the ICARUS consortium.
The presentations will be delivered in English.

The 5th European Civil Protection Forum took place in Brussels on 6 and 7 May 2015, featuring a conference as well as an indoor exhibition and an outdoor demonstration of RPAS and drones.
The ICARUS FP7 research project, which aims to develop robotic tools that can assist “human” crisis intervention teams, participated to the Forum by:
a) giving a talk and taking part in a panel discussion on “Using new technologies including UAVs for assessing and mapping”;

Following the earthquake that happened saturday 25/04/2015 in Nepal, Belgium has decided to send a B-fast team (Belgian First Aid & support team) composed of 45 people. The B-FAST team, which is a full ICARUS partner, will be executing urban search and rescue operations in Nepal. No unmanned systems have been packed by the team for this operation.

In Riga on 5-6 March, in the framework of the Latvian Presidency of the Council of the European Union, the Latvian government and the European Commission jointly organised the High-Level Conference on Remotely Piloted Aircraft Systems (RPAS).

In December 2014, the Belgian Council of Ministers agreed on the deployment of the B-FAST mobile laboratory to Guinea to help fight the propagation of the Ebola epidemic. The Council Ministers authorized B-FAST, known for its expertise in the coordination of humanitarian aid, to facilitate the deployment of the mobile laboratory.

The Royal Military Academy of Belgium (RMA), the Institute for Systems and Computer Engineering of Porto (INESC) and the Portuguese Navy´s Research Centre (CINAV) have joined forces to organise the 8th International Advanced Robotics Programme (IARP) Workshop on Robotics for Risky Environment (RISE), which will take place on the 28th and 29th of January 2015 in Lisbon, Portugal.

The ICARUS project coordinator, the Royal Military Academy of Belgium, is hosting the Remotely Piloted Aircraft Systems Civil Operations (RPAS CivOps) Conference between the 2nd and the 4th of December 2014 in Brussels. The aim of the international three-day event is to improve awareness of civil RPAS operations, to provide a platform for RPAS operators to outline their requirements and to inform the RPAS community of the ongoing regulatory activities in Europe.

The European Commission’s Directorate-General for Enterprise and Industry (DG ENTR) has invited the ICARUS project to participate in the 2014 Community Protection Expo (CP-EXPO) that will take place in Genoa from the 9th to the 11th of December, under the aegis of the Italian Presidency of the Council of the European Union. The aim of the event is to provide an up-to-date overview of the technologies, systems and solutions available for Civil Protection and to promote international debate and cooperation among stakeholders from the private and public sectors in the Security domain.

KEMEA, the Greek Centre for Security Studies, together with several European Project consortia, is organising the first European Symposium on “Border Surveillance and Search and Rescue operations technology (BSSAR)”. The two-day event starts tomorrow (27th-28th November 2014) and will take place in Heraklion, on the island of Crete, Greece.

The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UN OCHA) has released a policy paper on "Unmanned Aerial Vehicles in Humanitarian Response" which analyses the state-of-the-art of UAV technology and outlines its potential application in the fields of disaster response and humanitarian aid.
The ICARUS project was featured in the paper as an example of promising future use of UAVs in the context of search and rescue operations.

The NATO Centre for Maritime Research and Experimentation played a crucial role in enhancing autonomy and integration between Autonomous Surface Vehicles and Unmanned Aerial Vehicles as part of the ICARUS project, funded by the European Commission.
The NATO Centre for Maritime Research and Experimentation (CMRE), part of the NATO Science and Technology Organization, recently hosted sea trials in the context of the ICARUS (Integrated Components for Assisted Rescue and Unmanned Search operations) project, which is funded by the Europ

ICARUS UAV operational deployment presented at the INSARAG Team Leaders Meeting
Representatives of the ICARUS project participated in the INSARAG (International Search and Rescue Advisory Group) Team Leaders meeting, which

Representatives of the ICARUS project gathered on the premises of the Camp Roi Albert military base between the 8th and the 12th of September, 2014 in Marche-en-Famenne in Belgium to perform field tests on autonomous Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) and Unmanned Ground Vehicles (UGVs). These platforms can be used in disaster-stricken and crisis-affected areas following a large-scale incident for the detection of survivors and to provide maps that can assist in maximising the efficiency of Search and Rescue (SAR) operations.

ICARUS partner, INESC (Institute for Systems and Computer Engineering, Research and Development in Lisbon), organised the 3rd Workshop on European Unmanned Maritime Systems together with the European Defence Agency and the Portuguese Ministry of National Defence. The workshop took place from the 29th until the 30th of May, 2014 within the framework of the 4th Sea Forum in Porto, Portugal.

The TIRAMISU and ICARUS consortia have released a video showcasing their joint contribution to the assessment of the damage caused by the Bosnia-Herzegovina 2014 floods. The mission was deployed at the request of the Belgian First Aid and Support Team (B-FAST), with the purpose of identifying the most appropriate locations for the implementation of relief operations, through the use of an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV).

Representatives from the ICARUS project gathered between the 21st and the 25th of July, 2014 in Moiá, Barcelona, on an airfield owned by CATUAV, a local company specialising in remote sensing using Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs).
The capabilities of the latest UAVs and sensors developed within the context of the project were put to the test by the project partners.

The TRADR project (www.tradr-project.eu) is organising a summer school at the Czech Technical University in Prague (hosted by the Center for Machine Perception, http://cmp.felk.cvut.cz) from the 29-31 July, 2014. The summer school focuses on robotic perception and reasoning, and is related to long-term multi-robot missions and involved robotic manipulation, which is one of the main subjects of TRADR research activities.

Bosnia-Herzegovina and Serbia, as well as parts of Croatia, have been hit by the worst flooding on record following torrential downpours over the last few weeks. The Belgian First Aid and Support Team (B-FAST), one of the ICARUS project partners, has been deployed to Bosnia-Herzegovina to assist with relief operations. As part of the EU Civil Protection mechanism, along with the B-FAST team the Belgian Royal Military Academy (RMA), coordinator of the ICARUS project, has posted an expert in robotics accompanied by an Unmanned Aerial System (UAS) in the flood-affected area.

INESC, a ICARUS partner, presented the project during the 3rd Workshop on European Unmanned Maritime Systems. This 3rd Workshop on European Unmanned Maritime Systems has been co-organised by EDA, the Portuguese Ministry of National Defence, and INESC Technology & Science. The workshop took place in the framework of the 4th Sea Forum in Porto, Portugal.

Brussels, Belgium - May 19, 2014 - ICARUS and TIRAMISU, two Research and Development projects funded by the European Commission's DG Enterprise and Industry, have joined forces to participate to relief efforts in Serbia and Bosnia-Herzegovina in the aftermath of the most severe natural disaster the region has faced in the last century.

Skybotix, a member of the ICARUS consortium, has announced an Early Adopter Programme for its newly developed Visual-Inertial (VI) sensor that can be used in Unmanned Vehicles and robotic devices to help save lives during crises and emergencies. The sensor was developed in collaboration with the Autonomous Systems Lab at ETH (the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology) in Zurich, Switzerland.

A workshop jointly organised by the euRathlon and ARCAS (Aerial Robotics Cooperative Assembly System) projects will take place from the 15th to the 18th of June 2014 at the Center for Advanced Aerospace Technologies (CATEC) in Seville, Spain.
The four-day course is targeted at postgraduate and PhD students, researchers, engineers and other stakeholders in the domain of Robotics, and is designed to provide participants with the opportunity to gain practical experience of using outdoor autonomous robots in a range of different domains.

The euRathlon Robotics competition will take place between the 29th September and the 3rd of October, 2014 at the NATO Centre for Maritime Research and Experimentation (CMRE) in La Spezia, Italy. The competition is organised as part of the FP7 euRathlon project, funded by the European Commission.
Teams of researchers, masters and PhD students, industry professionals and other stakeholders from all over the world will compete to win the cash prizes available for each category and discover the latest technological innovations in the field of Robotics.

This documentary details the bureaucratic challenges faced by search and rescue personnel and their desperate need for civilian drones which are restricted by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). Countless lives could be saved with this existing and affordable technology, but the government prohibited their use in 2007.

The Belgian team for immediate emergency relief, B-FAST (Belgian First Aid and Support Team), the ICARUS project reference user for Urban SAR, has recently celebrated its 10th anniversary. To commemorate the ten years since the organisation was established, the most recognisable statue in Belgium, the Manneken Pis, was dressed in the official B-FAST uniform.
B-FAST, marked its first decade of providing assistance to disaster victims across the world by organising the dressing the nation’s most famous monument, the Manneken Pis, in the official B-FAST uniform.

DARPA RoboticsDARPA Robotics Trials will be h.
This year's DARPA Robotics Challenge (DRC) Trials will be held in Florida on December 20-21, 2013. These trials are designed to foster the development of robots with capabilities that enable them to operate in hazardous situations, allowing relief agencies to reduce the risk of personnel being harmed during rescue operations.

Mr. Xavier Lopez, Director of ASCAMM, one of the ICARUS project partners, signed a strategic partnership agreement with Mr. Jordi Santacana, Director of CATUAV, in a bid to promote technological development, UAV systems integration as well as training activities.

Haiyan, by some accounts the strongest tropical cyclone to make landfall ever recorded, hit the Philippines on November 7th 2013 with wind speeds of up to 315 km/h.
The cyclone caused devastation in the country, particularly on the islands of Samar and Leyte, where estimates of fatalities range from 2,000 to 10,000 people in the city of Tacloban alone.

ICARUS partners participated in the 7th International Workshop on Robotics for Risky Environment. The event took place as part of the biannual St. Petersburg Innovation Forum. During the two-day event stakeholders from across the globe gathered to discuss new developments in the field of Extreme Robotics.

The EURATHLON 2013 Unmanned Ground Robot (UGV) competition took place from 23 to 27 September 2013 in Berchtesgaden, Germany.
Engineers, computer scientists and technicians from all over Europe were able to test their Robots in simulated real-life conditions during this event: Five different scenarios were set up to showcase the capabilities of the robots in real situations and 14 teams participated.

First European Unmanned Search and Rescue End-Users' Conference
Why?
To discuss how your operational requirements can be fulfilled by the latest technological advances and to participate in live demonstrations.
When?
10th - 11th of February 2014.
Where?
Belgian Royal Military Academy Conference Centre, 8 Rue Hobbema, Brussels, Belgium.

A poll conducted by Monmouth University shows that the majority of Americans support the use of Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS) for Search and Rescue and border patrol activities. The poll found that 83 percent of Americans support UAS use for search and rescue and 62 percent support the use of the technology for patrolling our nation’s borders. Michael Toscano, president & CEO of the Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International (AUVSI), released the following statement:

Several ICARUS partners gathered in La Spezia, on the premises of the NATO Centre for Maritime Research and Experimentation in order to test the newly developed Unmanned Maritime Systems that are being developed to support Search and Rescue operations in marine environments.

Experts from the University of Central Lancashire teamed up with the Patterdale Mountain Rescue Team to test the unmanned remote control drone.
It is hoped the project will help save lives in the Lake District by encouraging ‘virtual’ search and rescue assistants to tap into the drone’s live feed online.

The Spanish Aviation Safety Agency (Agencia Estatal de Seguridad Aérea - AESA) has organised the first meeting between the public and private sectors to discuss the forthcoming Spanish Remotely Piloted Aircraft Systems (RPAS) regulation. The meeting took place on the 30th of May at the offices of the Spanish Ministry of Development.

Photographic Review of RPAS2013 In the context of the ICARUS project, an EU initiative which aims to develop robotic tools to assist human crisis intervention teams, the Royal Military Academy of Belgium (RMA), which coordinates the project, hosted the RPAS (Remotely Piloted Aircraft Systems) 2013 conference.

The European RPAS Steering Group (ERSG) handed over the Roadmap for the Integration of civil Remotely Piloted Aircraft Systems into the European Aviation system to the European Commission on the occasion of the Paris Air Show on 20th June 2013.

The objective of the workshop is to facilitate exchange of information on current and recently completed research and technology work-strands in the area of Unmanned Maritime Systems under EDA and related civil applications of UMS under FP7, in particular ICT – driven projects in DG

A deadly tornado impacted Moore, Oklahoma in the USA on May 20th, 2013, killing 24 people. Due the fast availability of other assets, it was not necessary to deploy unmanned tools for immediate crisis response. A thorough analysis on the use of unmanned tools by Robin Murphy of CRASAR (member of ICARUS Scientific and Technical Advisory Board) can be read below.

On May 4th, a train freight crashed in the Belgian municipality Wetteren. The train was transporting dangerous chemical products which exploded, leading to a release of toxic substances in the air. Dozens of people were injured and one person died from the toxic fumes.

A report on Unmaned Systems has been published in the week's digital edition of the DefenseNews. This article hightligths the importance of using unmanned aerial systems to be capable for dropping Search and Rescue supplies in specific areas.
This report shows the work carried out by the Royal Canandian Air Force and how expand UAV roles into activities formerly conducted by manned platforms.
An interesting article which show how, not only in Europe, are working in the development of Unmaned Systems.

More than 200 killed, 11,000 injured and thousands of homes damaged in a strong 6,6 magnitude earthquake near Ya’an Sichuan province on April 20, 2013.
Troops of the Chengdu Military Area Command (MAC) of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) continue the Search and Rescue work in Ya’an quake-hit areas.
The digital journal People’s Daily Online has dedicated an article to the three dimensional Search and Rescue work carried out by these troops.
Here you can read the entire article:

It’s called the Qube and it’s a state-of-the-art unmanned aircraft made by the Monrovia, Calif.-based technology company AeroVironment and is intended to be a new high-tech tool for public safety agencies across the U.S.
The Ventura County Sheriff’s Office wants to bring the Qube to local skies to help search-and-rescue teams find people lost or hurt in the surrounding mountains.
It could also be used by the Ventura County Fire Department in the event of a wildfire or other emergency situation.

Three partners of the ICARUS project will take part in the upcoming Eurathlon competition (http://www.eurathlon2013.eu/):
- Allen-Vanguard Ltd will participate with (a.o.) the Digital Vanguard vehicle, used as an end platform in ICARUS
- Space Applications Services N.V. will participate with the Milou vehicle, used as a validation platform in ICARUS
- INESC will participate with a ground platform, whereas they are focusing on marine platforms in ICARUS

EURATHLON is a new robot competition supported by the European Commission. The vision of EURATHLON is to provide real-world robotics challenges that will test the intelligence and autonomy of outdoor/off-road robots in demanding mock disaster-response scenarios.

The IEEE International Symposium on Safety Security Rescue Robotics will be organised in the Linkoping University (Sweden) from the next 21st until 26th October 2013.
The IEEE International Symposium on Safety Security Rescue Robotics was established by the RAS Technical Committee on Safety, Security, and Rescue Robotics shortly after the use of robots at the 9/11 World Trade Center collapse and subsequent accelerated adoption of robots for homeland security and public safety.

The 7th edition of the IARP (International Advanced Robotics Programme) workshop - Robotics for Risky Environment and Extreme Robotics- will be organised, with the support of the Climbing and Walking Robotics Association (CLAWAR), in the Russian State Scientific Centre for Robotics and Technical Cybernetics of Saint-Petersburg (Russia) from 1st until 3rd October 2013.

The European Commission funds more than 100 robotics research projects supported by around €600 million in the last five years. They address topics such as scene and situation understanding, perceiving the world through artificial senses (computer vision, haptics etc) and physical behaviour such as grasping objects or locomotion in everyday spaces. Europe's robotics industry is highly successful, accounting for about a quarter of the global production in industrial robotics and 50% market share in professional service robotics.

The Icarus project took part in the 10th edition of the IEEE International Symposium on Safety Security and Rescue Robotic (SSRR 2012) which took place from 5th till 8th November,2012 in College Station (Texas).

iRobot Corp., a leader in delivering robotic technology-based solutions, has received two orders from the U.S. Army’s Robotic Systems Joint Program Office (RSJPO) totaling $6 million (nearly 5 million euros). The orders call for the delivery of spares for iRobot 510 PackBot robots, including operator control units, manipulator arms and radios. All deliveries will be completed by November 30, 2012.

The Administration des Services de Secours (ASS) together with the emergency.lu project and the INSARAG Working group DACH will organise a workshop entitled “Beyond emergency.lu, service collaboration and extension” next 12th and 13th June at the Civil Protection School of Schimpach (Luxembourg).

Scientists of the Navy's new robotics laboratory, based in the nation's capital are stepping into the desert and rainforest to run experiments on autonomous systems without having to set foot outside the Navy's new robotics laboratory, officials said April 2. The Laboratory for Autonomous Systems Research (LASR), located at the Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) in Washington D.C., is the first addition to NRL's 130-acre campus in nearly a decade.

AEP - Portuguese Entrepreneurial Association and Oceano XXI - Association for the Knowledge and Economy of the Sea, are organising the 2nd Fórum do Mar, an event open to professionals working in the different sectors that make up the sea economy, the scientific community, and the general public in order to contribute to the development of the sea economy and to raise the public's awareness of the benefits that can be obtained from the sustainable exploitation of resources.

Following the explosion of a munitions depot in Brazzaville, resulting in numerous victims and at the request of the Republic of the Congo, Belgium, through a team of the Belgian First Aid & Support Team (B-Fast), sent emergency aid to the country of Central Africa.